


You Are Listening to Los Angeles

by cmk418



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-28
Updated: 2009-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmk418/pseuds/cmk418
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The broadcast from Los Angeles doesn't report everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Are Listening to Los Angeles

At three minutes to one every afternoon, Xander Harris locked the door of his office and switched on the computer. A few clicks of the mouse later and he was hooked into his favorite station out of Los Angeles. He spoke along with the broadcaster.

“It is 5 A.M. and you are listening to Los Angeles.”

 _Thank God_ , thought Xander. It wasn’t that he couldn’t get the news right here in London, he could, but L.A. was as close to home as he was going to get. Just thinking about a place where the sun shone, where the gossip ran high, and everything was just “lighter” made Xander homesick for a few minutes.

After the first celebrity gossip report, Xander felt renewed and ready to get back to the business of demon fighting and dealing with thirty-six teenage girls.

There was a light tap on the outside of the door. Xander rose from the desk and opened it, unsurprised to see Rupert standing on the other side. Xander stepped aside, allowing Rupert access to the office. The radio was still blaring through the speakers. “…received six to ten years in prison for…” was all Rupert caught before Xander switched it off.

“Sit down,” Xander motioned toward the second-most comfortable chair in the room. “Is Kari acting out again? I spoke with her yesterday about the duct tape incident. She seemed contrite. Those girls can occasionally put one over on me though. I remember a time when…”

“Xander.” The tone in Rupert’s voice was enough to make Xander stop babbling. “I received a call from Wesley.”

“Aren’t all calls from L.A. routed to Andrew?”

“They are. He thought this important enough for me to hear. It’s Cordelia. She’s gone.”

“Oh. Gone-gone? Not just disappeared, but…” At Rupert’s confirmation, he asked, “Have you told the others?”

“Not yet.”

“You should. Buffy and Willow. Willow may want to tell Oz too. He knew her.”

“Very well. Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah.” Xander rose from his desk, then walked over to the door and opened it.

“Xander.” Rupert followed him to the doorway.

“I’ll be fine, Giles. Don’t worry.”

Rupert didn’t remark on the sudden reversion to his surname. Instead he nodded and left Xander alone.

Xander locked the door and moved back to his desk.

 _Cordelia Chase._

She wasn’t the first girl he loved. That was Willow.

She wasn’t the first girl he’d felt real passion toward. That was Buffy.

She wasn’t the first girl he’d slept – had sex with. That was Faith.

She wasn’t… There were a lot of things that Cordelia Chase wasn’t.

She was the first girl that kissed him back and meant it.

He was going to miss her.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Xander heard the doorknob turn, then rattle, then the soft knock at the door. _Giles._

Xander glanced at the clock. 10 P.M. Better not have Giles call one of the trainees to check on him. He’d spend the next day re-hanging the door. “Hold on,” he called out to the door, stretching as he got out of his chair.

Xander unlocked the door and opened it. Giles was standing outside with a bottle of scotch in his hand. “I thought you might like a drink.”

“Giles, I’m sorry about this afternoon.”

“Don’t worry. Andrew took charge of your classes. He has what he considers ‘his war wounds’ and the girls have some very amusing stories to share with you on your return.”

“That’s nice. Why don’t we do this in the kitchen?”

“All right,” replied Giles, allowing Xander to turn off the lights before leading him downstairs.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

They sat on barstools, leaning their elbows on the kitchen counter. Xander nursed his scotch. It wasn’t his intention to have a hangover in the morning on top of everything else. Giles drained one glass, then poured another, sipping it slowly. He covered Xander’s hand with his own and waited.

“She left, Giles. Her last words to me were ‘You can get out too, Xan. You don’t have to stay here with the monsters, waiting to die.’ She thought she was escaping by leaving, going on to something better. It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“Death rarely makes any sense.”

“I mean, all of us – you, me, Willow, Buffy – we go through this terrible fight against the First and we all survive. But Cordy, she’s away from Sunnydale. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her.”

“Xander, do you… did you still love her?”

“There’s always going to be a part of me that loves Cordelia, just like there’s a part of me that will always love Anya, and a part for the other girls. Hell, there’s probably even a part of there that’ll miss Andrew.”

Rupert chuckled at that. “He does make himself rather memorable.”

“When I thought about us dying, I always thought it would be me that would go first. That first year, I expected to be walking along and then trip over my shoelaces and fall headfirst into a nest of demons with big teeth. Bye-bye, Xander. And then when Buffy died that first time and managed to come back, I thought, ‘well, that’s why I haven’t died yet, they needed me to save Buffy.’ So I thought that next year, it’d be my time, and with evil Angelus on the rampage, who could blame me. But nothing happened. So then I started thinking about who would be the next likely.”

“Buffy did die.”

“Yeah, but she’s not who I thought of. I thought of you.”

“Me?”

“Well, you were old-er than the rest of us. And all that training with Buffy. I thought she might run you through by accident or you’d have a heart attack in the middle of the training session.”

“I’m very fit.”

Xander laughed at Rupert’s admission. “I know that, Rupert. It didn’t matter that I used to have recurring nightmares about you getting killed or dropping dead on us,” Xander paused, a half-smile tinged his lips. “They stopped the night you left Sunnydale. Apparently my subconscious knew that safety was elsewhere.”

“It wasn’t safe here, either,” mused Rupert, taking a longer drink of his scotch.

“And then Willow with the crazy magic moved into the primary position.”

“So at one point or another, each one of us…”

“Except for Cordy.”

“Except for Cordelia.”

Xander took the bottle and filled their glasses. He raised his in toast. “To Cordelia.”

Rupert clinked his glass against Xander’s. “To Cordelia.”

“She’d like this.”

“What?”

“The two of us, sitting here like this. She’d probably say ‘I told you so’.” He waited until Rupert had set his scotch back on the counter before adding, “She thought I had a crush on you.”

“A what?”

“Crush. Infatuation. Fascination. Interest. All of the above.”

“Are you supplying a definition or making a statement?”

“Yes.”

“Xander.”

“I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe we should just write this off as one of Cordelia’s ramblings.”

“Maybe we should.”

Xander drained the contents of his glass in a single gulp, then shifted off the barstool. “The thing about the girls each having a piece of my heart, well, that’s true. And maybe it’s the way things have gone today that makes me think of my own life and how little time I may have left that’s making me say this, but, Rupert, you have the rest of it.”

There was a stunned silence for a moment as the two men faced each other.

“I just wanted you to know,” Xander whispered.

Rupert smiled at him. “Thank you.”

“That’s it?”

“For now. As you said, I’m old-er, which means I require a little time to adjust. Perhaps an hour or two before we take the next step.”

“Not too long.”

“It won’t be.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That night, Xander dreamed that he was going through his lunchtime routine. He turned on the computer, clicked on the radio station. Instead of the regular annoucer’s voice, he heard Cordelia’s. “It is 5 A.M. and you are listening to Los Angeles. And, by the way, Xander Harris, I told you so.”  



End file.
